


Fifteen Words Will Save...and Sacrifice

by ncruuk



Series: Save and Sacrifice [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Military, Original Character Death(s), Thriller, UNIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncruuk/pseuds/ncruuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate Stewart is the Chief Scientific Officer, leading UNIT, originally founded as a military organisation.  Science leads, but sometimes to a point where military options are the only ones ultimately available.  When the time comes to give those orders, they are given in short, precise coded phrases that are designed to save, but at a sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fifteen Words Will Save...and Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Please note - this is a fic set with Kate very firmly within the 'military' space within UNIT. Whilst there is no explicit descriptions of violence, military assaults are not cuddles and rainbows, and the consequences invariably deadly.

“Yes?”  There was no need to identify herself, not on this telephone line.

 

“Fifteen minutes Ma’am.”  There was no need for the caller to explain, not for this message.

 

“Thank you.”  

  
  


Returning the telephone handset to its cradle, Kate Stewart stared at a point somewhere beyond her desk for a long moment.  Finally, taking a deep breath, she pushed back her chair and, glancing into the footwell of the antique mahogany desk, reclaimed her shoes.  Standing up, she automatically swept her hands around the waistband of her suit trousers, making sure that the pale pink shirt was still neatly tucked in.  Then, as she stepped to the side of her desk chair, she used her right hand to roll the left sleeve of her shirt down.  As she shook her wrist, settling her watch back into place, she reached with her right hand into her trouser pocket and extracted the solid silver greyhound with a hinged pin and engraved back.  Without looking away from the point that was somewhere between her desk and the coat stand, she nimbly squared the cuffs on her left sleeve and slid the back and pin through the four buttonholes, before flicking the back and trapping the double cuffs securely in the cufflink’s grasp.  A final sweep by agile fingers saw the greyhound rotated so that it was running into her sleeve, and, satisfied that her left arm was appropriately turned out, she repeated the process for her right sleeve with one difference: what had been a shake of her wrist to reposition her watch was now a stretch to help her arm readjust after the hours of paperwork she’d just completed with total focus, until the telephone call.  

 

Without shifting her focus, she reached on instinct for the collar of her suit jacket which had hung patiently on the back of her desk chair ever since she’d removed it some seven hours earlier when she’d returned to her office.  Pulling it on, she settled the jacket squarely on her shoulders, using her right hand to straighten her left shirt cuff and check the greyhound’s position before switching sides and repeating the process with her left hand on her right sleeve.  A final twist of the single silver ring she wore on her right middle finger and she was ready.  As her left hand ran around her jacket collar making sure it was smooth and her hair was not trapped by it, she pushed her desk chair tidily up to the desk.  A final, automatic check that her shirt collar wasn’t caught her the jacket and that the small, discrete diamond and silver pendant on the fine silver chain was resting on her collarbones, the clasp neatly out of sight at the nape of her neck, inside her collar.

 

It was less than twenty seconds since she’d ended the telephone call.

 

With a final glance across her desk, Kate Stewart reached for the gold fountain pen resting by her long abandoned coffee mug.  Absently spinning the pen through the fingers of her right hand, she used her left hand to remove her glasses and put them in her jacket pocket.  She walked across her office and out into the corridor, shoving her now empty left hand deep into her trouser pocket..

 

It was less than a minute since she’d been rung.

 

With shoulders square, back straight, head high and eyes clear, Kate Stewart walked steadily through the rabbit warren of tunnels that made up the offices of UNIT beneath the Tower of London, the sound of her short spiked heels echoing in the deserted corridors.  She saw no one, heard nothing except the sound of her own step until, as she turned into a corridor built in Medieval times, she saw the three steps ahead of her and very twenty-first century heavily armed soldiers stood either side of the gleaming steel door that, should it be necessary, could withstand all manner of violence.

 

It was less than a minute since she’d left her office.

 

It was 3.14am.  There were 14 minutes left.

 

Striding confidently down the corridor, she stepped lightly up the three steps and stopped one pace forward.

 

“Gentlemen.”

 

“Ma’am.”  The soldier on her right stepped to the side, his hands never moving from the loose but effective grasp they had on his weapon, ready to shoot should it be required.  Turning her head towards the ceiling mounted camera, Kate looked neutrally at the blinking red light, waiting for the light to turn from red to green.  She had no more than thirty seconds for the scan to complete and confirm her biometric identity, otherwise the soldiers would be required to complete their orders.  Thirty seconds was fifteen blinks of the red light.  The light turned green after four.

 

“Kate Stewart.  Science leads.”  She spoke her name and two of the words stored in the security database, her voice clear, calm and steady.  After three green flashes, the light turned blue and there was an audible click as the featureless steel door was automatically unlocked as, identity confirmed, she was able to enter the UNIT London control room.  Had the green light flashed ten times the door would have remained locked and the soldiers knew their orders. 

 

It was 3.15am.  There were 13 minutes left.

 

“Where are we?”  As she spoke, she strode to the chair at the head of the long table, a well lit table covered in a seemingly haphazard disarray of papers, coffee cups and computers.

 

“Minimal civilian presence inside a safe distance,” said a voice from the darkness that filled the space between the table and the illuminated screens that spread out around the room such that she could see all of them from her chair.

 

“How safe?”  As she sat down, Kate’s voice was calm and her body language was relaxed - this wasn’t the sharp, panicked question asked on a wave of adrenalin by someone wielding power, this was the reasonable, polite enquiry of a leader wanting to be clear before they calmly shouldered their accountability and accepted their responsibility.

 

“Not safe enough,” explained a second voice, McGillop stepping out of the shadows to retake his seat, pushing aside a sheaf of papers to find the single calculation that confirmed his answer.  “They are 3 miles away.  Far enough to survive a conventional explosion, but not far enough to survive the alien device overloading.”  No one mentioned what the survival rate was if the alien device operated correctly.

 

“And our uninvited guests?”  Kate’s voice continued to betray as little as her body language was - as tense and nervous as the rest of the room was, she was steady and measured.  As the digital wall clock ticked silently onto 3.16am, it was as if, realised McGillop later, time was moving more slowly for her than for the rest of them.

 

“Committed to their actions.”  The first speaker joined McGillop at the table, his collar unbuttoned, tie askew.  “They have stopped participating in dialogue.”

 

“Which in English means?” 

 

“Uh, they spat on the communication links.  Their salivia is…”

 

“A highly toxic acid, I remember the briefing.”  

 

Kate stood up and walked in silence towards the monitors at the far end of the room, conscious of people moving out of her way as she passed down the side of the table, retreating back into the shadows at the sides of the room, their ears, she knew containing earpieces that connected each of the specialists to their own teams, their own agencies, as all available information was collated, analysed and reviewed, ready for use if needed.  The room was full of people ready to help, to contribute but ultimately, not to share in the decision, a decision that was hers to take, her responsibility to shoulder.

 

“So, to summarise,”  she paused in front of the main display, extracting her glasses from her jacket pocket so that she could study the real-time satellite images of their problem as she spoke, “we have a spearhead invasion force from the Figtruna galaxy.  They propose to claim this planet as theirs since it is ‘vacant’ as they see it.  This, they intend to do by using their technology to trigger a chemical reaction which will destabilise the Earth’s atmosphere, effectively asphyxiating the whole planet.  And the atmospherics will be right for this to happen with maximum success in approximately 3 hours.”

 

“Yes Ma’am, around 11am local time.”  McGillop was incredibly relieved that she hadn’t been in the room when they’d had the argument about whether the atmospheric conditions forecast was timed based on GMT or local times.   It had not been UNIT at its finest.

 

“And this spearhead force are aware of this?”

 

“They knew before we did.  But once we determined what their optimum requirements are, we could also predict that if they fail to take the first opportunity, conditions will be optimum a further three times in the next 20 hours.”  As he finished his update, McGillop saw the digital clock move to 3.18am and felt a bead of sweat move down his forehead as, underneath the clock, a second, digital clock appeared, starting the 10 minute countdown.

 

“Colonel, is the strike team in place?”  Kate spoke to the room at large, her eyes moving from the satellite images, knowing he would be in the room somewhere.

 

“Yes Ma’am.  They are in position, awaiting the order to execute.”

 

“And by execute we mean?”

 

“Penetrate the facility, neutralise the alien enemy and isolate the explosive charge from the gas tanks and request the air strike Ma’am.”

 

“And the air strike is to ensure that the alien technology does not fall into the hands of the native enemy?” checked Kate, using the term ‘native’ in the true UNIT sense of meaning an entity that originated on planet Earth and had no alien component.  Unfortunately for UNIT, these enterprising aliens had elected to launch their invasion from the mountainous region within Afghanistan, making the ‘native’ also an ‘enemy’ since there was no diplomatic channel through which the security and recovery of the alien equipment could be negotiated.

 

“Yes Ma’am.  The RAF is airborne, ready to assist.”  The countdown moved to nine minutes.

 

“The two separate strikes are absolutely necessary?”  Kate knew she had eight minutes, eight minutes was a long time, long enough for her to check, and double check the facts and hypotheses before she took the decision.

 

“Based on the information from the Black Archive,” began McGillop, moving to join Kate at the main display, so he could highlight particular areas as he spoke, “which these images confirm, the chemical components are being kept separately in these tanks, with these pipelines enabling them to be filtered into the alien device, which we know is located inside the facility here.”  He pointed to the main machine hall of the abandoned factory the spearhead force had spent the last who knew how long converting for their purposes, their presence unnoticed by all until 18 hours ago when the satellite images had caught UNIT’s attention.  “The air strike will destroy the factory and the tanks, including the alien device.  However, if the pipelines are open and the chemicals have already begun to combine, then the resultant explosion is not contained and the chemical reaction happens anyway.  It is therefore vital that the air strike is delayed until there is confirmation that the pipelines are shut, otherwise we complete the alien mission for them Ma’am.”

 

“Thank you McGillop.”  Kate studied the screen to the left of the main display, that was showing how dawn was progressing: with the Figtruna being a predominantly nocturnal species by Earth standards, it was important to wait for as much daylight as they dared before launching the UNIT assault.  8am local time, 3.30am at the Tower had been identified some hours earlier by the military operation planners as the earliest time for the assault - any earlier and the Figtruna still had too much of an advantage given the light levels; any later, and the scientists had confirmed that the chemical reaction be already underway.  The odds were not exactly favourable.

 

Taking off her glasses, Kate walked steadily back to her seat, the gold fountain pen still held loosely in her fingers.  As she walked, deep in thought, the rest of the room watched as the digital clocks advanced to 3.22am and the countdown moved to 6 minutes.  6 minutes until the order had to be given, if the order was given.

 

Leaning on the back of her chair, Kate looked down the table, her glasses held in her left hand, the pen once more spinning through the fingers of her right hand, the shiny gold glinting in the light as it moved, holding everyone’s attention as they waited for her to speak, waiting for the silence to be broken.

 

“We’re satisfied with the Figtruna intelligence?  From the Black Archive?”  She knew the answer, had read the reports, seen the original materials but still had time, still had one final minute to wonder if this really was what they thought it was.

 

“Yes Ma’am.  It was obtained from the abortive Figtruna attempt in the Arctic, under, uh,” McGillop stumbled for a moment, his throat dry, “under orders issued by your father.  The Doctor verified it.”

 

“Colonel - have we received the all clear from all coalition forces?”  There was no way Kate wanted to come through the other side of this and discover she’d caused even more complications for a delicate and volatile region than she was already going to be doing.  It was one thing to neutralise an alien threat that then required cover stories, quite another to create a separate geopolitical incident through inadvertent ‘friendly fire’.  That would not be easily explained to the PM or the Coalition leaders.

 

“Yes Ma’am.  Nearest coalition assets are 20 miles away.”

 

“And that includes deniable assets?” 

 

“Yes Ma’am.”  The Colonel had been here too many times before - he checked, then had double checked.  Then had called in a favour, just to be certain.  “We are on our own.”  Which, thought the Colonel, knowing better than to voice what he knew Kate Stewart was all too aware of, whilst there were no ‘friendly’ assets on the ground to be accidentally hit, it also meant that there was no easy back up, no one securing their perimeter.  Even once the aliens were dealt with, UNIT would still be surrounded by an enemy.

 

“Thank you.”  Kate mentally reviewed everything she’d read, everything she’d been told, re-evaluated everything she’d learnt since they first became aware of this situation and the risks involved.  

 

As the clock ticked over to 3.25am, Kate reached her final decision.

 

“What are the code names?”

 

“The Ground team leader is Retriever 1.” As the Colonel spoke, McGillop placed the protocol sheet in front of Kate, so that she would know who whoever they heard was.  “And the pilot is Thunder Bravo.”

 

“Gentlemen.”  She stood up straight, shoulders back, head high and still as, eyes clear and steady, she put her hands in her trouser pockets, pen still grasped in her right hand.  “This is a deniable operation, classification Black.”  The clock ticked over to 3.26am, and the countdown switched from counting down in minutes to counting down the final 120 seconds that they had before there was no more time.

 

“Open Communications.”  Kate waited for the few seconds it took for the necessary satellite link ups to be established.  The already quiet room became, if it were possible, even quieter as even the computer fans and discs seemed to still so that, when the communications analyst delivered the thumbs up signal to Kate, McGillop was certain that he could hear his own heartbeat.

 

“Greyhound 1 to Retriever 1, are you receiving, over?”  

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Kate could make out the countdown shift from 100 to 99 seconds, being able to distinguish the shift from 3 digits to 2.

 

“Retriever 1 receiving, awaiting orders Greyhound 1.”

 

“Retriever 1, you are a go.  Repeat, this is Greyhound 1, you are a go.” 

 

Fifteen words.  That was all it took.  Fifteen words that set in motion a chain of events that, in less than fifteen minutes would see the Earth saved or sacrificed.

 

It was with a strange sense of detachment that Kate stood, watching and listening as she tracked the progress of the team on the satellite image and heard the garbled bursts of chatter on the radio as the team fought their way into the alien stronghold, the Colonel calling out occasional milestones as the perimeter was breached and the various pipelines were disconnected.

 

“Retriever 1 to Greyhound 1.”  It was 8 minutes since she’d given the order, 8 long minutes since they’d been directly spoken to the assault team, as opposed to being eavesdropping observers.

 

“Greyhound 1 receiving.  What’s your status?”  Kate had already seen the trucks surging north towards the factory, already seen the transmitted telemetry from Retrievers 3 through 8 end.

 

“Compromised.”  There was a pause and the room collectively froze, waiting for the detail, throats tightening in anticipation.  “The…” Retriever 1 struggled to remember the code words.

 

“Retriever 1, this is Kate.  What’s your name?”

 

“Joe Ma’am, Joe Ford.”

 

“Well hello Joe Ma’am…” she teased, unable to resist the easy joke, relieved to hear him chuckle in spite of his situation, “...how are you doing?”

 

“You’re a scientist, aren’t you Kate?”  Kate could see the Colonel’s face hardening, clearly wishing his soldier would stick to protocols and code words and whatever else constituted military ‘perfection’, but Kate didn’t mind about military protocols and ‘perfection’, wasn’t bothered about code words and security.  Not now, not in the final moments before she had to do what Joe knew she had to do.  Now, now she knew she needed to be Kate, and let Joe, who sounded exactly like the brave but scared twenty-four year old she knew he was, be that brave but scared boy who was someone’s son, brother, hopefully not yet father.

 

“Yes.  Biologist.”

 

“That’s good…” Joe was interrupted by a coughing fit. “...so you know about the body an’ stuff…”

 

“Yes.”  In spite of the severity of their situation, she smiled. “What’s your question Joe?”

 

“The vein, in your leg...up top, by your, uh, bits...what’s it called?  The really big one?”

 

“That’s called the femoral artery,” explained Kate, acknowledging the gesticulations of the Colonel, seeing the advancing enemy and knowing that time was running out.

 

“Retriever 2, uh, Toby...he’s hit there, in his femoral artery…” explained Joe, his voice fading as he coughed again.

 

“Is he with you Joe?” asked Kate, gesturing to one of the nameless analysts to enlarge the telemetry for Retriever 2, enabling her to see that yes, that would make sense.

 

“Next to me, but he’s asleep.”  Unconscious due to blood loss thought Kate, relieved to know that they at least knew where Retriever 2 was.

 

“And what about you Joe?  How’s your…”  Kate rapidly reviewed what she knew, about the equipment Joe would have been wearing, what the threat assessments had told her, what she’d heard in his voice, in his coughing fits, “...stomach?”

 

“Not so great… those bad guys, they spit really, really…” 

 

“Really nasty stuff.  I know Joe.  I’m sorry.”

 

“Not your fault Kate… and it doesn’t matter.  Me and Toby, we’re alright.”

 

“Where are you Joe?”

 

“Sitting by the thing Kate… we got it done.  You don’t need to worry about that…” He coughed again, and through his comms link they could hear him spitting, trying to clear his mouth. 

 

“I was never worried Joe, you’ve done a very great thing.  Is Toby still asleep?”

 

“Yeah, I’m getting sleepy, but I can hear them… you gotta do it Kate…”

 

Even the Colonel stopped gesticulating as the real meaning of those words hit home for everyone who heard them, heard a young officer, who’d already survived so much was now speaking so calmly, so maturely to the one woman who still had to take one final step, make one final decision.  He’d helped her save the Earth from the alien threat, but Earth wasn’t yet safe.

 

“Not yet Joe.”  Kate grabbed a pen from McGillop’s lab coat top pocket and scribbled something on the pad in front of her, thrusting it at him.  “I’d like to stay talking with you, until you fall asleep, if that’s alright with you?”

 

“That’d be nice Kate….” Joe coughed again, and again they could hear him trying to clear out his mouth, only after a couple of spits he evidently decided it wasn’t worth it.  “...your dad…”

 

“What about him?”

 

“He’d got it right… it works…”  He coughed again, giving Kate another second to try and work out where he was going with his thinking, trying to work out what this young officer, who hadn’t joined UNIT until after her father had died, could mean.  “...even on these guys…” he finished in almost a whisper.

 

It was the Colonel who made the connection fastest, who grabbed a pad and scribbled on it, before passing it down the line of silent observers to Kate.  Three words, that the soldiers who joined UNIT invariably remembered from their lectures on UNIT history.

 

“Is that how you did it Joe?” asked Kate, nodding in thanks when she saw what he’d written, before glancing at the clock and then looking back at the screen, the satellite image showing the trucks had arrived at the compound.  They were out of time, Joe and her.

 

“Yes Ma’am.  Me an’ the Toby did…”  he wheezed, too weak to cough, “..just like he did.”

 

“You still with me Joe?”

 

“Just Ma’am…” his voice was fading fast.  “...we did it...and it…”

 

“It worked Joe, it always does.  Can’t beat…” Kate paused, listening to his wheezing breath over the open comms link, “Five Rounds Rapid.”

 

“Worked like a charm Ma’am…” 

 

“He’d be pleased to hear that Joe.”  As she spoke, Kate watched the telemetry from his monitor confirm what she’d heard.  Joe was silent, his open comms channel starting to pick up the faint noises of the enemy starting to enter the building.  Gesturing, she signalled that she wanted her communications with Joe muted - if he was asleep but not yet fully unconscious, she didn’t want him hearing this.

 

“What’s the status of Thunder Bravo?” she asked, her voice steady.

 

“Approaching position Ma’am.”

 

“Open Communications.  Greyhound 1 to Thunder Bravo, over?”

 

“Thunder Bravo receiving Greyhound 1, awaiting orders Ma’am.”

 

“Engage, authorisation code Greyhound 1 Alpha Tango Oscar.”  As she spoke the codeword sequence that gave confirmation to the pilot that her order to engage was specifically related to the target location he’d already reviewed with his own chain of command, her fingers reached into her trouser pocket once more and grasped the gold fountain pen, her thumb rubbing the barrell, feeling the texture of the engraving.

 

“Authorisation code Greyhound 1 Alpha Tango Oscar confirmed.  Missile away.”  There was a long minute whilst they waited, watching for the launched missile to travel into the field of view of their satellite and then travel onwards to the target. “Impact confirmed,” said the pilot, his voice calm and dispassionate as he reported what his cockpit systems were telling him.

 

“Impact confirmed, on target.”  Kate spoke the formulaic words automatically, knowing from the immediate hustle of activity around her that the visual spectacle of the cloud of dust they could see on the satellite feed was being further confirmed by various other systems and data checks.  “Thank you Thunder Bravo, job well done. Greyhound 1 out.”  Kate waved her hand and all communications channels were terminated by one of the analysts, enabling Kate to speak freely to the room.  “Thank you everyone.  I don’t need to remind you this was classified Black.  And never happened.”  With a sharp nod of thanks in the general direction of the Colonel and McGillop, Kate turned on her heel and left the room the same way she’d arrived.  

 

It was 3.56am, less than 45 minutes since she’d been rung.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
